1) Ask smart questions to smart people. Steve seemed to be a master at this - he can sense when someone is glossing over something, and attacks it. I.E.: "What do you mean, 'for now'; will there be problems later on?". Most people don't want to hear the things you clearly omit. Steve went for the jugular.
2) Experience. Heard of the Next computer? Uneconomic - the whole automated assembly, and razor-sharp magnesium corners, and 16 different shades of black thrown out because they weren't quite right drove the costs up too much. Heard of WebObjects? Steve had his failures. He tended to salvage what he could, restart them, and finally get them working; but he still had failures. I bet he learnt a lot from them.
To be fair, the Cube was expensive, but the pizza box-shaped NeXTStations were competitively priced to similarly-powered high-end PCs and Macs of the early 90s.
1) Ask smart questions to smart people. Steve seemed to be a master at this - he can sense when someone is glossing over something, and attacks it. I.E.: "What do you mean, 'for now'; will there be problems later on?". Most people don't want to hear the things you clearly omit. Steve went for the jugular.
2) Experience. Heard of the Next computer? Uneconomic - the whole automated assembly, and razor-sharp magnesium corners, and 16 different shades of black thrown out because they weren't quite right drove the costs up too much. Heard of WebObjects? Steve had his failures. He tended to salvage what he could, restart them, and finally get them working; but he still had failures. I bet he learnt a lot from them.